YMMV / Home Improvement

• Awesome Music: Dan Foliart's theme song for the show. Never have power tools and grunting sounded as good as in this show's theme.
• Critic-Proof: Home Improvement was never a big darling of the critics (having to compete with edgier shows like Roseanne, Seinfeld and Friends), the cast got nominated a few times but only Tim Allen won a Golden Globe. However, it was extremely popular with the People's Choice Awards, it was a top ten show (#1 a few years) for its entire run.
• Crosses the Line Twice: When Tim asked an exterminator who used nerve gas what's shaking, Wilson says his entirety is.
• Fair for Its Day: In later years the show has been criticized for its Strictly Formula episodes (Tim and Jill have an argument, Tim can't understand why Jill is angry, goes to Wilson who quotes a philosopher, Tim goes to Jill to apologize) with the male/female Double Standard, but the portrayal of Tim and Jill with common and realistic issues of miscommunication between genders was quite revolutionary. The show got loads of fan letters saying how well it reflected actual marital disputes. Supplementing that was that neither Tim or Jill were the dominant personalities in the family, Tim was immature but he was not One of the Kids, he could take care of himself and the family just fine without her. Also for a genre where Ugly Guy, Hot Wife is almost the norm even in modern sitcoms, it's still probably one of the few successful shows where the husband and wife are both on the same level of desirability.
• Fridge Horror: Invoked. When Randy goes upstairs to study with his girlfriend, Tim and Jill reminisce about how their own study sessions used to lead to sex... and a split second later they go check on Randy and the girl over the end credits.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In-Universe example - Every other joke about Al's mom lost some of their humor when she passes away in Season 8's "Dead Weight".
  • Brad being portrayed as the biggest trouble maker in the family, as actor Zachery Ty Brian has had multiple run-ins with the law as an adult.
  • In season 3, John Binford suddenly passes away from a heart attack. His actor, Noble Willingham, died from a heart attack in 2004.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In the series finale Tim introduced Al as "Al-be-doing-infomercials-for-a-living Borland!" Richard Karn is indeed doing infomercials now, in costume as Al.
  • When Mark goes trick or treating as Tim during season 2's Halloween episode, Randy tells him he would get more candy if he dresses up as Al. Two years later, he does just that and wins a sack of candy at a costume contest where Al's mom was the judge.
  • In one episode, Randy comes home with an "embarrassing haircut", with Jill saying the stylist used too much mousse. The audience busts a gut laughing, even though the style (short messy top, slicked-back sides) would become a huge trend a handful of years later, and persist as an almost standard men's haircut for decades. Bonus points for Brad mocking Randy while sporting a chin-length bob cut few teen boys would be caught with today.
  • A first season episode had Brad and Randy telling Mark that Santa Claus was dead and it was Tim who bought all his presents. A couple years later, Santa really WOULD die...at Tim Allen's hand! Bonus points for also answering Mark's subsequent question about how Santa fits presents for everyone on earth in one bag!
• Iconic Character, Forgotten Title: No, the name of this show is NOT "Tool Time". Tim Allen himself made an inverted mistake in a blooper during a Tool Time segment, calling that show "Home Improvement".
• Just Here for Godzilla: Many people freely admit to watching the show solely for the "Tool Time" segments, which are almost universally viewed as the funniest part of the show.
• Memetic Mutation: Al's "I don't think so, Tim".
  • From the video game: "REAL MEN DON'T NEED INSTRUCTIONS". ^Explanation  The instruction manual for the game consists solely of this sentence.
  • Another from the video game for some, the low-resolution faces of Tim and Al on the TV at the beginning becoming the iconic faces of the titular duo of Spike and Barley Play.
  • Tim's various grunts.
• Most Wonderful Sound: "aaaauuuUUUUGGHH?!?!"
• Narm: As shown on documentary Too Funny To Fail, an old record of a promo for "The Longest Day" (when Randy thought he might have cancer) was shown to various celebrities associated with the documentary, which was met with silence for how dark the topic was for the normally comedic show... a fact that was soon reminded when the commercial ended with saying the then-new episode airs before the ridiculously named The Diet Root Beer Mug Show with Dana Carvey, which then cued a laughing outburst from the viewers.
• Nightmare Fuel: A majority of Tim’s accidents can become painful. One of these actually resulted in Tim needing surgery.
• Parody Displacement: Tool Time is a parody of This Old House, with the main host (Tim) being a charismatic salesman and his co-host (Al) being an anti-charismatic, bland, flannel-wearing man who nonetheless possess unrivaled expert knowledge of the topic at hand being a direct parody of Bob Vila and Norm Abram's screen presence. In addition, scenes outside of Tool Time point out how most of the actual renovation work is done by a trained crew and that the hosts' contributions are mostly symbolic. However, as Home Improvement has managed to remain popular and remembered in popular culture more than 20 years after it first aired while Vila and Abram have been eclipsed by newer, younger talent in the "Home Improvement" genre such as Ty Pennington and Mike Holmes, the fact that Tool Time is a parody is largely lost on those who watch the reruns today.
  • The creators even lampshaded the fact that Tim's Tool Time persona was a parody of Bob Vila's by depicting the two of them being bitter rivals, with Vila making multiple guest appearances to compete against Tim in multiple challenges.
• The Problem with Licensed Games: The SNES "adaptation" of the show, Home Improvement: Power Tool Pursuit!. Note that the word "adaptation" is in quotations, as the game had nothing to do with the show. Several reviewers had issues with this:
  Seanbaby: This is a screenshot of a man with a grappling hook fighting a dinosaur. I swear to God this is based on the family show with the same name.
  JonTron: They made a game out of this? REALLY?!? I understand that back then if it had a face they made a friggin' game out of it, bur really? Home Improvement THE GAME? That's like making a first person shooter out of Sister, Sister!
  • Even worse is the fact that the "manual" is just the text "REAL MEN DON'T NEED INSTRUCTIONS" plastered over fake manual text, which could be funny had the game given you any instructions whatsoever. In fact, the game is practically unbeatable due to this - the first stage requires you to use a grappling hook to get past a large pit, but you probably won't even know that you can even use more than one weapon because there's nothing that tells you this.
  • The lack of a real manual was only the beginning. The game did have a few good ideas, but all of them were ruined by confusing levels littered with instant death pits that you couldn't see until you fell in, a poor camera, and the fact enemies take a lot of damage to kill. Even ignoring the fact that the game has nothing to do with the TV show it's based on, it's still an awful game.
• Realism-Induced Horror: The plot of "The Longest Day" is very frightening for parents to think about: you take your child to the doctor for a routine check-up and instead find out that they might have a serious disease.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • William O'Leary played Marty before his big break in Kamen Rider Dragon Knight.
  • Future Oscar nominee Amy Ryan, of Gone Baby Gone, The Wire and The Office (US) fame, plays Jill's younger sister Robin in the season 1 episode "Luck Be A Taylor Tonight".
  • It happened almost simultaneously, but Pamela Anderson didn't become legendary until her stint on Baywatch after leaving Home Improvement.
  • Maggie Lawson played Brad's college-age girlfriend later in the series, eventually becoming better known as Juliet on Psych.
  • Lucy Liu appears as a fangirl when Al was named one of Detroit's most eligible bachelors.
  • Rider Strong plays a punk kid in the second-season Halloween episode, one year before landing his best-known role, Shawn Hunter on Boy Meets World.
  • A young Adam Wylie plays one of the Cub Scouts in Mark's den from a Season 1 episode.
• So Okay, It's Average: The show itself was popular for its time, but in hindsight even members of the cast have admitted that the formula of the show was very generic, and that it really did nothing to try to push any boundaries or introduce anything that had not been seen in any of the other many sitcoms popular at the time. Tropes Are Not Bad, as evidenced by the show's huge success during its initial run and continued syndication.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The aforementioned "Bewitched" opens with Tim playing his usual Halloween pranks on everyone only to discover that everyone has gotten used to them by now and aren't even phased and Tim starting to grow depressed about it, suggesting the episode will be about Tim having come to terms with his old-school pranks being seen as old-fashioned now. Instead, this is quickly forgotten after the opening credits, and the rest of the episode turns into a remake of a previous Halloween episode from the show with everyone teaming up to play a giant prank on him.
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • The kids' fashion sense, particularly their curtained hairstyles, in the later season can make it fairly obvious it takes place in The '90s.
  • In the final scene of "Adios", the family is allowed to go all the way to a departure gate to say one final goodbye to Randy as he leaves for Costa Rica. This alone dates it to a pre-9/11 era as well.
  • Nearly the entire season 7 episode "Thanksgiving" is set at the Pontiac Silverdome during a Detroit Lions game^note during which Tim inexplicably causes a Big Blackout while attempting to adjust the Jumbovision screen, obviously dating it to before the Lions moved to Ford Field in downtown Detroit in 2002.
  • Same thing the very next season with a scene in "Neighbors" that is set at Joe Louis Arena during a Detroit Red Wings game, which, of course, dates it to before the Red Wings moved to Little Caesars Arena in 2017. Among the visible rinkside board advertisements in this scene are one for the Farmer Jack grocery store chain, which went defunct in 2007, and one for Casino Windsor in Windsor, Ontario, which is now known as Caesars Windsor.
    • The Silverdome, Joe Louis Arena, The Palace of Auburn Hills^note home of the Detroit Pistons from 1988 to 2017 and Tiger Stadium^note home of the Detroit Tigers from 1912 to 1999, the Tigers playing their last game there just four months after the show aired its Series Finale were previously mentioned in several prior episodes as well, and all have now been demolished.
  • Tim and Jill's reaction to learning that Brad is smoking marijuana as described in "Values Dissonance" below, particularly the notation that it's illegal, as Michigan legalized marijuana in 2018.
• Values Dissonance:
  • "Taylor Got Game", where Brad decides to forgo becoming a professional soccer player with a steady income so he can play and earn a degree at UCLA (even though he struggles academically), has not aged well to The New '10s, a time where rising tuition costs, over saturation of degree holders in the job market, and stagnating wages have caused many to question the notion that college educations automatically lead to better livelihoods.
  • In another Very Special Episode, Brad admitting to occasionally smoking marijuana is treated by Tim and Jill as akin to him being a hardcore drug dealer. While this opinion has not entirely vanished (mainly in conservative areas of the United States), smoking marijuana has become far more accepted in recent years. Many states have decriminalized it or legalized smoking it entirely even without a prescription (Michigan being one of them in 2018).
• Values Resonance: However, the marijuana episode still provides a couple of justifications as to why Tim and Jill would be upset with Brad using it. First, he was driving after smoking it, which is not only dangerous, but illegal. Second, he was stashing it where people younger than him could access it.
• The Woobie: Mark, in early seasons. God, his big brothers were such pricks.
  • It never seemed to bother him all that much though, and Brad and Randy usually suffered for the teasing.
  • Mark kind of remained The Woobie even into his teen years. Because of his oddball habits and interests (and briefly becoming a goth), he often had difficulty keeping a girlfriend.
  • Jerkass Woobie: Randy was an insufferable smartass, but several episodes showcased his hidden insecurities (his small size, worrying about how "cool" he was to girls, thinking Brad was their father's favorite) or gave him serious issues to cope with ("The Longest Day" in which he thought he might have cancer and "Losing My Religion" in which an old woman he bonded with suddenly became ill).
  • Really should also be noted that Brad, despite having none of these tendencies, did see these issues with his brothers (sometimes even Jill, Tim, Wilson and Al!!) and was very protective and loving of them, even in his Jerkass moments.
    • Brad (and by extension his actor, Zachary Ty Bryan) actually could be The Woobie on a meta level during the last half of Season 5 through the end of Season 7. In Season 5, Brad had some Character Development to start becoming a good student at the same time, Johnathan Taylor Thomas's character, Randy skipped two grades to join Brad in High School as to enable the two of them to have High School plotlines together. Unfortunately, JTT's career really took off at that time and combined with his more intellectual character and strong episodes like "The Longest Day" or the one where he wrote a big paper article slamming Tim's employer Binford, he started to overshadow Brad, who mainly got stuck with romantic or sports storylines. Taylor's departure for Season 8 ultimately allowed Brad and Zachary Bryan to get a season in the limelight dealing with him prepping for college.

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